Blocks are chained together with a punctuation block on the end containing the brain and speaker. Each word block contains wiring and a simple chip to facilitate serial communication of the words to the brain. The brain sends a trigger signal to the first block, and each block sends back its data and triggers the next block.

In the prototype, words will have IDs looked up in a small database, but it would be nicer to transfer the word data with a plain text encoding. The current plan is to use a multiplexer indexed into by a binary counter.

This is my first real hardware project, so I would really appreciate any pointers, especially with regard to buying (compatible) parts (that actually do what they need to do), as well as other possible solutions to fixed serial data output. (A counter hooked into a multiplexer seems inelegant somehow... Is there perhaps a chip that can be programmed with a string to output, but not as overkill as an FPGA?)

For (lots) more information, check out the project on GitHub!